The Rally From Nowhere, continued.

Jon Stewart recently sat down with Rachel Maddow in order to defend himself against criticisms from all over the left, including here, that the Rally to Restore Sanity essentially served as a huge banner of false equivalence. Particularly stinging was Bill Maher's criticism, saying "If you’re going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something."

Jay Rosen posted his own commentary about the interview in YouTube form, along with the full interview, Bill Maher's clip, and an old Daily Show takedown of CNN's false equivalence here. All the videos are well worth watching. I just wanted to highlight two points that Jay found very interesting which relate back to a lot of what I love about his own work: 1) Jon felt the need to come and defend himself because he wants a news system that focuses not on the left/right, Dem/GOP, blue/red fight, but the conflict between, as Jay put it, corruption and virtue. 2) Jon stresses to Rachel over and over that he is on the sidelines and is thus different from Rachel, and she fights him on it.

Legal Claims for Bogeyman Fundraising?

Does the bogey(wo)man have a legal claim when her name is invoked in political fundraising?



Scott Brown recently released a fundraising letter that claimed Rachel Maddow was running against him. Maddow has gone on the air several times saying that it is untrue that she is even considering running and that the Senator will not accept her calls. Even more bizarrely, the Senator denies she is calling at all, and seems to be claiming that the DNC paid for the full-page Boston Globe ad that MSNBC printed on her behalf, not once bothering to check with Maddow. This level of willful ignorance can only be called intentional. What I'm interested in here, is whether there are, can be, or should be legal remedies to such a blatant, fraudulent misuse of political fundraising.

An Attack on the Legitimacy of the State, Democracy, and the Law

(updated below)

Ok, so many of us either joke or cry about the Tea Party and the Great Republican Death Spiral. I've often personally speculated that eventually, this will shift us to two new parties - the Libertarians/Blue Dogs and the Progressives. But a couple of things have made me wonder whether the danger is greater than we imagined.